


The Price of Freedom

by shadeshifter



Category: Leverage, Mass Effect, NCIS
Genre: M/M, Original Character Death(s), Rough Trade, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeshifter/pseuds/shadeshifter
Summary: Tony's in Vancouver, doing some contract work for the Spectres, when the Reapers arrive. Joining the Resistance is the only real choice any of them have after that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My incomplete submission for November's Rough Trade. I'm hoping some encouragement will convince me to finish it.

**Earth, Sol System, 2186 (present day)**

Tony leaned against the railing, looking out over the Vancouver skyline. The buildings glinted in the faint morning sunlight and the Fraser River glittered as it cut through them. He’d never been to Vancouver before. Most of the brief time he’d spent on Earth had been at the Alliance base in Rhode Island going through Basic, but he could never forget that particular shade of blue. Any other planets he’d been to, he’d been too focused on fighting Batarian slavers or stumbling into sketchy Cerberus projects he’d been only too happy to tear apart.

Vancouver was a beautiful city; different entirely from the Citadel, the heart of galactic politics and trade, where he’d spent most of his childhood. He knew they’d moved to the Citadel when he was about five, after the First Contact War, but didn’t remember much before that. The Citadel was recycled air and an artificial day/night cycle, it was prejudice and aloofness, pretty on the outside but ugly underneath, at least all the parts he’d seen of it. Even the Citadel sky was artificial and he’d felt like he was living in a bubble. No matter how long he’d spent planet-side, he never got used to all the open sky and the fresh air. He didn’t even remember smelling fresh air until he was eighteen and on his own.

All anyone around him seemed to be talking about was Shepard’s court martial, opinions vacillating between support and repudiation. But then Shepard had always been a polarising figure. Saving the galaxy a time or two would do that. Tony wasn’t sure how he felt on the matter either. He’d admired Shepard and, when Tony had been in the Navy, had followed Shepard’s career closely, trying to model his own after it. Working with Cerberus... he shook his head. There were few sins he found so unforgivable.

Cerberus was the reason he’d gotten up at an entirely unreasonable hour so he could scout the location of the meet. There was nothing quite like turning an agent of a terrorist organisation before breakfast. He felt a sharp thrill of satisfaction at the idea of getting one over on Cerberus. The organisation had been allowed to run rampant for far too long, had ruined far too many lives, his own included. It was about the only reason he’d even agreed to work for a Spectre in the first place.

He had liked being a free agent, liked not being tied down to anything or anyone, but the Spectres did some good work. They might be lone-wolf loose cannons who were above the law, but they got the job done and that was something Tony could appreciate. Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, Tony thought with a snort, wondering how long it had taken someone to come up with that name; the left hand of the Council, reaching out from the shadows to make the Council’s word law.

The Council wouldn’t usually involve themselves in strictly human issues, which they’d claimed Cerberus was for years. It was only recently, predominantly with Shepard’s involvement with both the Council and Cerberus, that they’d been willing to quietly look into the matter.

“DiNozzo?” a soft voice asked, the slightest tremble underlying it. Tony turned slowly, making sure none of his movements attracted attention, and leaned a hip against the railing so he could look out over the people walking past them. No one was paying any attention to them, just two more tourists admiring the view, but that didn’t mean they were safe from prying eyes.

“Ross.”

Stephen Ross furtively looked around, twitching whenever anyone wandered too close. His hair with thinning and his pale skin had a fine sheen of sweat. Tony sighed. He hated the twitchy ones. You could never be sure they wouldn’t change their minds when things got a little bit difficult and sell you out for what mercy they might receive from whatever quarter.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ross said, wringing his hands. Tony had to remind himself that this might help the Spectres target Cerberus. Cerberus was worth any price. If he’d bothered to keep in contact with anyone, they’d probably tell him he was obsessed, but he wasn’t going to let it bother him as long as he got to raise a little hell along the way.

“There’s a reason you contacted me,” Tony told him. He’d had a crisis of conscience that Tony hadn’t hesitated to take advantage of. Ross was a scientist for Cerberus and there wasn’t a single one he’d met that hadn’t done something awful in the name of humanity. “You wanted to do the right thing.”

“I did,” Ross insisted and then jumped, looking around. He continued much more softly. “I do.”

“Then all you have to do is give me a little information, that’s all I’m asking for,” Tony told him, keeping his expression open and his tone cajoling. If there was one thing he missed about the Navy it was how straightforward things could be. Mostly aim and shoot. Grinning at Ross at the thought would definitely be the wrong move, so he very carefully didn’t.

“You don’t understand,” Ross said, backing up a step. Tony let him move away for now because too much intimidation would only make him run.

“Cerberus does some terrible things,” Tony told him. “I understand that better than most. I’m not asking you to act, but you’re living under an enormous weight. All I want from you is for you to unburden yourself.”

“I...” Ross began, eyes only settling briefly on Tony’s face before darting away again. Tony watched him steadily. “That is... We’re looking into ways to combat the Reapers.”

It was one of many things that frustrated Tony, that Cerberus was actually doing something about the threat of the Reapers while the Council and the Alliance dragged their heels. Granted, he probably wouldn’t approve of any of the things Cerberus was doing to prepare and likely half the experiments would be something someone would have to deal with when the Reapers were knocking on their doors.

“The Illusive Man thinks he can find a way to control them,” Ross continued.

Every time Tony thought he’d heard the worst of what the Illusive Man, the anonymous leader of Cerberus, was capable of, he’d come up with something even more insane. The Reapers were hundreds of thousands of years old synthetic beings, trying to control them would never end well.

“Where are you working?” Tony asked.

Like any good terrorist organisation, despite Cerberus’ protestations to the contrary, it operated in cells; each cell had no idea what the others were doing. What the Spectres needed was access to someone higher up on the food chain, but they couldn’t get that without first going through the lower levels.

“Stratford, but we’re only a small, ancillary office,” Ross told him. “There’s a lab somewhere on the East Coast.”

There was a great deal of denial in that statement. Cerberus had no ancillary or unimportant sites. Everything Tony knew about the Illusive Man, which admittedly wasn’t much, led him to believe the man abhorred waste and uselessness.

“Where?” Tony pressed, stepping into Ross’ space now that he was divulging what he knew. “Specifically.”

“I don’t know. They don’t tell me information like that.”

“What do they tell you?”

Ross twitched under Tony’s steady gaze, but he didn’t move away. Rather like a small animal that knew it was caught, Tony thought.

“I’ve taken too long,” Ross said, still not looking away from Tony. “I should be getting back.”

“Ross,” Tony said, gentling his tone but still standing over the man who swallowed hard. “You made a choice. A good choice. The right choice. And you’ve come this far. I just need a little more.”

“There’s stories of people disappearing or becoming something different, something... _wrong_. Our own people,” Ross told him in a hushed voice. Tony’s hand twitched with the urge to hit the man. As though Cerberus’ own people disappearing in their experiments was somehow worse than when it was anyone else. He very much doubted Ross had ever seen the real aftermath of any of those experiments.

“Go,” Tony told him, sure he wasn’t going to get anything further out of the man. Not today, at least. He’d try again when the next Cerberus atrocity made its way to the Alliance News Network. It was just pathetic that he was sure he wasn’t going to have to wait long. Ross turned and fled without looking back.

Tony watched him for a moment before sighing and turning back to the view, leaning heavily on the railing. He took another moment to appreciate the brilliant blue of the sky and breathe in the fresh air before he activated the omni-tool on his left wrist. His whole forearm lit up with an orange glow of the hologram as he linked to the Spectre who’d hired him. It wasn’t even close to one of the best omni-tools on the market, but those were only used by hackers and tech specialists. He didn’t even come close.

“Lieutenant DiNozzo,” the Spectre said.

“I’m not Alliance Navy any more, Maetar,” Tony said, resigned.

“Of course not, Lieutenant,” Maetar said, sounding mildly amused. In Tony’s experience, because their quick metabolism made them do everything so much faster, including think, Salarians tended to find other species a little slow. They were an amphibious race Tony was rather fond of, even if they did have some strange customs like reproductive contracts. Though he supposed it wasn’t any weirder than the human impetus to settle on any bit of rock they found floating in space, whether it could adequately support them or not.

“Is the connection secure?”

“It is.”

Foot traffic around him had thinned out quite a bit, but Tony still moved to a quieter area.

“The Cerberus presence on Earth is stronger than previous reports,” Tony told him.

“We had surmised as much.”

Tony nodded. Cerberus was never just what you saw, or even speculated, there was always so much more hiding beneath whatever thin veneer of civility they pretended to uphold.

“There’s a lab somewhere on the East Coast. My contact didn’t know the specifics,” Tony told him. Maetar sighed.

“It’s more than we knew before.”

“It won’t be the centre of their operations,” Tony cautioned. Cerberus was fairly decentralised except for the Illusive Man and no one knew where he’d set himself up like a spider at the centre of his terrorist web.

“It never is.”

“I’ll head to the East Coast tomorrow. See what I can uncover there,” Tony said.

“Let me know what you find out.”

“When I know anything, you’ll know,” Tony told him. Maetar made a noise of agreement and then hesitated. Tony waited to hear him out.

“I have considered putting your name forward as a Spectre candidate,” Maetar told him.

Tony laughed for a long moment before he realised Maetar wasn’t joining in. The Salarian waited patiently for him to stop.

“You’re kidding, right?” Tony asked hesitantly. It had been years since he’d depended on anyone else, since he’d let himself form attachments, but Maetar was different. The Spectre had wormed his way in before Tony even knew to guard against him.

“Over the last six months your work for me has been exceptional.”

“Thanks,” Tony said, shifting uncomfortable at the blatant praise. He’d never known Maetar to be anything less than scrupulously honest with him and knew the Salarian believed his assessment, but he wasn’t sure he could be part of something like that again. “But I’m not sure that’s something I’m ready to be.”

“Of course,” Maetar said and that was the end of it. There was a pause before Maetar spoke again. “You should take some time off while you can. I believe there’s another Blasto movie showing.”

The Blasto movies were truly awful, but somehow Tony still ended up seeing all of them. They were practically a rite of passage into a Galaxy-wide culture now.

“You might be right,” Tony said with a grin.

-

**The Citadel, Serpent Nebula, 2163 (23 years earlier)**

Tony hated reporting to his father, but there wasn’t any way to avoid him in the apartment. It was spacious as these things went, especially for the Citadel, but his father’s presence seemed to take up all the room until it was hard to breathe. The whole Citadel felt like that sometimes. Like there was too much squished all together and he’d never be able to escape.

He watched his father tap at the display at his desk for a long moment, waiting to be noticed. Experience had taught him not to stand at anything less than attention while he waited and Tony always learned quickly.

He didn’t know what it had been like when his mother was still with them. He had only vague memories of her; the sound of her voice, the particular shade of her eyes that was so like his, her laugh. She hadn’t come with them to the Citadel and he’d never found out why. The consequences of asking his father were uncomfortable and he'd learned quickly to stop. There were days he resented her for leaving him alone with his father and days when he wished she’d kept him with her. Sometimes he wondered if she was dead.

Tony shifted his gaze from his father to the window that took up an entire wall. The artificial sky was bright and blue, but he could see the flickering of the shield. He wondered what a real sky looked like. He’d seen what was beyond that artificial sky only once, when his father took him on a business trip to a cruise ship, and it had been beautiful. The Serpent Nebula was luminous and colourful and he wondered why they didn’t have that view all the time.

He hated living on the Citadel, hated the people and their attitudes, hated the way they looked at him with suspicion when they looked at him at all. They’d moved here, his father and him, just after the First Contact War and everyone thought humans were a violent expansionist species. He had been five years old at the time, barely cognisant of the undercurrents around him. Earth, the planet of his birth, was just a story he’d heard and a collection of distant, disjointed memories.

Despite everything, Tony was fascinated by the aliens he encountered. They were strange and colourful, and so very different. Every encounter or observation seemed to teach him something new. For the first few years, the only other humans he’d ever seen were the soldiers and politicians mostly just passing through. Certainly no other children.

“Junior,” his father said, pulling him out of this thoughts. He never needed to say more. Tony knew the routine by now.

“I’m up-to-date on mathematics,” Tony told him. “I’m ahead with humanities, but behind with physics.”

Tony hated the technical subjects where everything was either right or wrong, black or white. He was much better with the arts, with interpretation and stringing together discordant pieces of information. He would never tell his father, but he had half-formed plans of doing something with music. He wanted to be able to create something that added to the universe, not barter around what was already there like his father did. And he knew he would waste away behind a desk.

“You need to focus more,” his father said, rising from his seat and going over to the cabinet where he kept his liquor. Tony swallowed.

“Yes sir.”

His father poured a drink, watching the liquid swish the ice cubes in the glass.

“You spend too much time playing around with your music,” his father said, turning to stare down at him. “I’ll be suspending your privileges for anything but school work.”

That stopped Tony cold. All his school work was sent to him and submitted over the extranet and there was never anyone his age around that would speak to him for any length of time. Music was the only part of his life that made him truly happy.

“You can’t,” Tony said before he could stop himself.

“What did you say?” His father asked, voice carefully calm in that way it sometimes was right before he exploded.

“Please.”

His father raised a hand and Tony found that he wasn’t just scared, he was angry. He’d been moved away from his people, his home, to a place that couldn’t be either. His mother was gone and his father vacillated between disinterested and annoyed. He was angry at the unfairness of it all and the way he’d never had a choice in anything.

Tony raised his arm to protect himself. A blue light swept across his closed eyelids and he heard an exclamation and a crash. Slowly, he opened his eyes and stared, open-mouthed, at the blue glow surrounding him. He could feel it tingle, like pins and needles just before the sensation would get painful. He twisted his hand, staring as the light shimmered over it before it faded away.

Biotic. That’s what he was. That’s what he could do. It had been all over the news and the extranet, even at the Citadel. Stories of children hurting and bullying others. There had even been a murder. The news stories had made it clear how much of a threat these new abilities were and how justified the fear was of people who had abilities they didn’t. Human biotics were dangerous and out of control, everyone knew that. They had been the result of exposure to Element Zero, not born naturally with the abilities like other species.

He looked up to see his father sprawled at the base of the wall. Fear shot through him at the thought of the consequences he’d face now and he trembled. His father didn’t move, but Tony could see his chest rise and fall steadily. The realisation of what he’d done was slow to dawn, but finally he smiled. He could fight back now, even against someone bigger and stronger.

He didn’t need anyone. Not when they’d fear him just for what he could do. He’d spent his entire life following indefinite rules he only half understood. He wasn’t going to fit in anywhere; the aliens wouldn’t accept him because he was human and the humans wouldn’t accept him because he was a biotic. Maybe it was his turn to be a little out of control.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to write in such a way that you don't have to know Mass Effect, but if you have any questions, please let me know.
> 
> I'll be explaining more about biotics, but basically it's telekinetic space magic. 
> 
> Reapers are sentient, sea-creature-like, giant synthetic beings who believe it's their purpose to periodically wipe out most life in the universe, clearing the way for a new cycle.

**Earth, Sol System, 2186 (present day)**

Tony hefted his backpack onto his shoulder when it slipped in the bustle of the crowd to the shuttle service. If there was one thing he missed about being Alliance Navy it was military transports; they were quick and efficient, and he didn’t have to deal with harried civilians. He was heading to the platform indicating that it was going to the East Coast when a sound like the sky being torn apart rent the air, followed by screams and cries of panic. A Reaper, large and dark, loomed out of the sky, its beam cutting through buildings and vaporising people in seconds.  
  
He'd never seen one in person, only footage of the battle for the Citadel three years ago. It was at least a kilometer in length; smaller, he thought, than Sovereign, who'd been at the forefront of the that attack. Its black carapace-looking shell glinted in the morning light and its eyes, if that's what they were, gleamed a sinister red. There was nothing about it that wasn't entirely other and terrifying.

“Go,” Tony said, directing the people around him to the platform, pushing some of them if it was required. “Everyone get on the shuttle.”

They clambered in, overcrowding the small craft, but Tony was sure it would still take off. He couldn’t imagine the people were any heavier than some of the equipment he and his team had had to transport. He smacked the side when it became clear no one else was going to fit in and the shuttle took off, out of the way of the Reaper. Tony watched it for a moment longer before linking to Maetar.

“Where are you?” he asked as he drew his pistol and jumped down from the platform.

“Navy hearing chambers,” Maetar told him. “You need to get to safety.”

Tony could see, between the skyscrapers and the spires, another Reaper looming over Maetar’s location.

“You need to get out of there,” Tony told him. “You have one right on top of you.”

Tony started running, avoiding people and jumping over debris as he made his way to the hearing chambers. His biotics flared around him when husks clambered up in front of him, their cybernetics glowing an eerie blue, lighting up their vacant faces. He hated the Reaper’s ground troops, knowing that they were once human or Turian or Krogan. He lashed out, knocking the husks back and then shooting any that still moved.

“If you do something stupid, you’re going to make me rethink your Spectre recommendation,” Maetar told him, tone light, but Tony could hear the stress underlying it. He pushed himself to go faster.

“I didn’t want to be a Spectre anyway.”

He’d been considering it though. Considering what it would mean for him. The chance to go after Cerberus with impunity and the resources of all the Council species. But it also meant following orders again, being tied to something bigger than just his conscience. And quitting the Spectres wasn’t something done lightly.

“A pity,” Maetar said.

“I can see three Reapers from my position. There’s isn’t anywhere safe,” Tony told him. There was one over the shuttle station now, the one in front of him and one heading to the promenade. They were all high trafficked areas and it was clear the strategy for this first assault was to go for maximum casualties. The idea that any casualties would be turned into husks to be used against the survivors made him sick.

“Probably not,” Maetar admitted. “This might turn out to be our last stand.”

“Then I guess it’s the perfect time to do something stupid.”

He could see the building now. There was a chunk cut out of it and rubble surrounding it. Tony couldn’t even begin to guess the death toll. It must have been in the hundreds of thousands world-wide and it had only been five minutes. It had been decades since war had touched the Earth. Even the First Contact War with the Turians had been mostly fought out amongst the stars. It seemed strange to see Earth touched by it now, to see the gouges, cracked and torn, like open wounds, across its surface.

“You can stop worrying,” Maetar told him. “I’m out of the building.”

Tony thought he could see the slight figure of the Salarian through the dust and the people clamouring to get away. He started forward.

“If you do something stupid, can I tell them to take your Spectre status away?” Tony asked with a grin. Of course, there might not be anyone left to appeal to. There might not be anyone else left at all. That thought almost stopped Tony in his tracks.

“That’s standard fare for Spectres.”

Tony reluctantly huffed out a laugh.

“Hypocrite.”

Part of the Reaper's carapace pealed away, to reveal a shining red energy cannon which began to glow and a beam shot out of it, cutting through the crowd in front of the building. For a moment, all Tony could see was the red light of the beam and all he could hear was destruction. When the light and sound faded, there was another wound in the landscape of Vancouver.

Suddenly Tony didn’t know what to do. Push forward, fight, run; he had no plan of action and in the middle of a battlefield that wasn’t the best course of action.

“Maetar?” he asked softly, already knowing the answer.

Tony listened to the silence and knew that Maetar was gone. He’d only met the Salarian in person once. All their other conversations had taken place over technology, from a distance. They’d probably only been on the same planet at the same time a handful of times. There was a moment when he couldn’t breathe but he made himself push past it. He didn’t have time to deal with it now.

He hadn’t even gone to see the Blasto movie.

A scream started him forward again and he slid down the incline of a broken support beam to the riverside. He arrived just in time to see a brute, one of the Reaper-converted Krogan, plough into a soldier, sending him flying until he collapsed like a limp rag doll. The soldier didn’t move.

Tony flared his biotics, pulling the brute into the air and startled when another soldier fired at it with an assault rifle. Definitely a better idea than trying to deal with a brute with his pistol. He glanced at the soldier’s insignia before shifting his gaze back to their surroundings.

“Have you had any orders, Corporal?” Tony asked, hoping someone had some kind of plan of action for giant sentient cyborgs invading Earth. If they did, he’d love a recording of that planning meeting.

“No, sir,” the soldier told him. “They hit the hearing and the base first.”

Tony ran a hand through his hair, wondering where to go from there. Clearly if they’d hit both targets, most of the leadership would wiped out and it was unlikely any kind of orders would be forthcoming. What they needed to do was get to cover, taking as many people with them as possible.

“Are you Navy, sir?” the corporal asked.

“Something like that,” Tony said, keeping up the conversation only because it seemed to be steadying the corporal. “This way,” he added, making a decision.

“That’ll take us right under the Reaper, sir.”

“Indeed it will, Corporal,” Tony told him, starting to cautiously move in that direction, avoiding debris and keeping an eye out for any Reaper ground forces. They were already in the Reaper’s shadow as it towered over them, moving slowly upriver. “But the Reaper is facing the direction I came from and I don’t particularly want to be in the path of its beam.”

“Yes sir.”

“What’s your name?” Tony asked, because if either of them was going to die, Tony didn’t want to be ‘sir’ and he didn’t want to remember the kid as just ‘Corporal’.

“Jaime Sutton, sir.”

“Tony,” he said. “Or DiNozzo is you have to be formal.”

Even when he’d been Navy, he hadn’t been too good with the formalities. Just another factor that had made it easier to leave in the end. Tony absently flung an approaching husk far into the water.

“Have you eaten, sir?” Sutton asked softly.

“Not yet,” Tony told him, but he knew he would need to soon.

Using biotic abilities was physically draining, especially since biotics had a much higher metabolism than those without the ability, which was great for preventing a hangover, but terrible for a prolonged battle. Sutton kept his silence on the matter, for which Tony was grateful. They weren’t going to have the luxury of a snack break and a nap for quite some time.

At least, like most biotics of reasonable power, Tony had several supplements and energy bars on him. It was something biotics, especially those serving and likely to be using their abilities frequently, had quickly learned to do when it could make the different between getting you and your team out of a situation safely or being too exhausted to muster up so much as a flicker.

Not too far in the distance he could see what appeared to be the Normandy, the most identifiable ship in the Navy, take off at speed, breaking atmosphere in seconds, and Tony couldn’t help but feel a little dispirited at their being abandoned by their greatest military advantage. Even as he understood the strategic benefit of not wasting their resources on a fight they couldn’t win yet, it felt a little too much like being left to die.

“We need to keep moving, Sutton,” Tony said when he saw that the man had fallen behind as he also watched the ship disappear from sight.

“Yes sir,” Sutton said, subdued.

“They’re going to get help and then they’re coming back,” Tony told him with confidence he wasn’t feeling. Clearly Sutton wasn’t buying it either because he simply nodded. Tony sighed. “Come on, kid.”

As they crested an incline of scaffolding and broken concrete, Tony saw Alliance soldiers fighting off an overwhelming number of Reaper ground forces – husks, brutes and marauders – in what looked to be a losing battle.

“Cover me, Corporal,” Tony said before flaring his biotics in a shield around him and diving into the midst of the battle. A moment later, the sound of an assault rifle joined the fray. It was clear that the majority of the soldiers were protecting an asset. Tony didn’t know who or what it was, but if now wasn’t the time to take a stand, he didn’t know when would be.

He aimed a biotic-fortified fist into the temple of a husk trying to get behind the main group of soldiers and ignored the crack and squelch that followed. He was already moving on when the husk collapsed to the ground. A marauder that tried to tackle him from behind was riddled with bullets before he even realised it was there and he sent a quick, informal salute to the soldier responsible. The man nodded back before turning to the next target.

The next few minutes became a blur of instinctive movements and blood in a variety of colours, and everything was lit by the shifting light of biotic flares and eerie light of the converted. He dodged and weaved between ally and foe alike, keenly aware that, since he was in Vancouver doing investigative work, he hadn’t worn any armour and biotic shields would only get him so far. Slowly, the tide turned and the forces attacking them thinned.

As things quietened down, with one of the soldiers taking down the last marauder, Tony took a moment to look around. The man the bulk of the soldiers had been protecting he instantly recognised as Admiral David Anderson. He was sure there were few people on Earth who wouldn’t. The man had been instrumental in shaping the Alliance over the last few years.

“Admiral!” Tony yelled. Anderson looked in his direction then followed his gaze. He shot the husk coming up behind him, taking it out.

“What’s your rank, Marine?” Anderson asked, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Not a Marine any more.”

Tony swept his gaze across the debris around them as they picked their way to the relative safety of cover.

“Maybe you left, but that doesn’t stop you being a Marine,” Anderson said, mirroring Tony’s cautious observations.

Tony’s feelings about the Navy were a little conflicted these days. It had given him the first place he’d ever felt a part of something, connected to people in some fundamental way. It had also been entangled with Cerberus. Towards the end, even his own team had been compromised and Tony refused to have anything to do with the organisation. It was why he’d left, not just the Navy but the merc job after that. It was why he worked alone.

“Lieutenant,” Tony told him. “Staff Lieutenant Anthony DiNozzo.”

“N7?” he asked.

“I started the training,” Tony said with a shrug. That had been near the end of tenure with the Navy and he’d been looking for reasons to stay. Special forces hadn’t been the answer. “Didn’t get beyond N6.”

“Well, Lieutenant,” Anderson said. “Looks like you’ve been reactivated.”

“Any chance I can appeal?” Tony asked with a wry smile. Anderson snorted.

“Sure son, as soon as you find a working court.”

“So, that’s a no then.”

-

They’d gathered other survivors to them as they walked, mostly civilians, half of whom were in varying degrees of shock. Several of them had lagged behind and been picked off already and Tony could see that the other soldiers were spread thin trying to cover them all and watch out for threats. Tony jogged ahead to where Anderson was walking.

It wasn’t until Anderson had been elevated to human ambassador to the Council alongside the first invasion by the Reapers that Tony had even become aware of who he was other than a name he’d heard in a news story a while back.

Tony wasn’t entirely sure why Anderson had stepped down as ambassador, although he figured the endless politics would be frustrating to a career-Navy man like Anderson. The timing was also a little coincidental, since it had happened almost to the day of Shepard returning to the Alliance fold with a Cerberus ship in tow and a tale of Reapers gathering at the edge of the galaxy, ready to wipe them all out.

It was that that allowed Tony to put his trust in the man. Anderson had stood firm against popular opinion, had defended Shepard when everyone else was disavowing all knowledge of hero turned apparent traitor. He had showed himself to be a man of integrity and honour, a man who wouldn’t bow to pressure or be swayed by promises and power, even at the expense of his own career.

“What’s our destination?” he asked softly, keeping an eye on the closest civilians. It had been over an hour since everything had happened and they needed to find shelter soon. There was a man holding a little girl close to his chest, dirt and blood smeared across his worryingly blank face. He’d joined them somewhere in the first half hour. Next to him walked a girl barely out of her teens. They had pulled her out of a collapsed building a few minutes ago. She’d been trapped next to the body of an older woman who resembled her enough to be her mother.

Anderson didn’t reply, but his mouth settled into a grim line and a muscle on his jaw ticked. Tony nodded mostly to himself. There was no destination, not yet, and everything they’d come across so far that might serve as one had either been infested with Reaper forces or destroyed.

“Sir,” he said and fell back a little, returning to scanning the shadows around them.

A few minutes later they shifted away from the side alleys to one of the main streets. There was rubble littering the road, but that was becoming disturbingly familiar. It was the bodies strewn around amongst the rubble that he was sure would give him nightmares for however long he lived.

There was a spurt of gunfire just beyond the curve in the road and Tony raised his pistol, stepping between whatever was in front of them and the civilians near him. One of the soldiers ahead of him raised a hand indicating it was clear, but Tony didn’t relax, not just yet, not when another spurt of gunfire sounded.

As he rounded the corner, Tony saw the cause of the disruption; half the road was taken up with dragon’s teeth, the spikes the Reapers used to impale and convert beings of all species to mindlessly serve them. He kept his pistol up and his biotics felt like they were crackling just below the surface of his skin.

Tony slowed, picking his way through the debris and trying to ignore the spikes. There was another spurt of gunfire as a soldier shot one of the impaled bodies from a safe distance. Anyone wondering too close would cause them to trigger and attack the group. If there had been any other safe route, Tony was sure the scouts would have led them that way. The fact that this was their only option made him not want to know what the other routes might have been.

Despite trying not to look too closely at the potential husks, Tony couldn’t help but be drawn to familiar looking features. He could feel someone coming to stand at his side as he stopped, staring at the sunken features of Stephen Ross, already tinged blue with the conversion process. Cerberus suddenly seemed like such a small concern in comparison, but he was sure if there was a way for Cerberus to ruin whatever chance they might have, even if it was only the hope of a chance, Cerberus would find and exploit it. That was all they seemed capable of doing.

Tony aimed his pistol at Ross’ forehead and pulled the trigger several times, clustering the shots. The body twitched, limbs flailing weakly, before it fell limp. Tony might not have respected or liked Ross, but no one deserved to be turned into a mindless puppet in service of an ancient race determined to wipe out all life in the galaxy.

“A friend?” Anderson asked, sympathetic. Tony wished Anderson wouldn’t waste it on this. They’d be short of things like sympathy and kindness soon enough if the war dragged on for any length.

“No,” Tony said and left it at that. Anderson simply nodded and let Tony move them on, though he settled in silently at his side. Tony wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The last person to take an interest in him had been Maetar and he’d spent the last hour trying to deliberately not think about him.

Anderson didn’t tell him they’d get through it or things would look better soon, he didn’t ask about Tony’s family or why he’d left the Navy, which was probably why Tony felt compelled to give him something. He was sure it was deliberate, but Tony figured it was better to keep on the Admiral’s good side since, the way people seemed to rally around him, it looked like he might be their only way of surviving.

“I was investigating Cerberus,” Tony told him, not missing the way Anderson’s lip curled at the mention. “I guess I’ll have to postpone that.”

He grinned at Anderson who gave him an exasperatedly amused look, like he was more than a little used to dealing with smart-asses. Tony’s grin widened, even if he wasn’t entirely feeling it.

“From what I know of them, it’ll be worth keeping an eye on them,” Anderson said and Tony fully agreed. If they could, he was sure Cerberus would take advantage of the chaos of the attack to forward their own aims. Aims that would undoubtedly run counter to the good of the galaxy.

“Maybe the Reapers will do us a favour and wipe them from the galaxy,” Tony suggested.

“We could be so lucky,” Anderson muttered and Tony nodded. He’d prefer being the one to do it himself, but if the Reapers were kind enough to do it themselves, he wasn’t going to complain.

One of the forward scouts appeared in front of them, seeming to melt out of the shadows. Tony wondered if she had an invisibility shield or if she was just that good. Her expression seemed caught between exhaustion and hope.

“There’s an office block two streets over, sir,” she told Anderson. “It’s mostly collapsed, but the basement is intact and it looks like it should hold.”

Tony didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to hear about being made to sleep in a mostly collapsed building and he’d even been stuck in a prefab unit, sweltering in the heat of a desert moon, while Batarians had them pinned down, firing at him and his team from all angles.

“You heard the Private,” Anderson said. “Let’s head out.”

“Yes sir,” Tony acknowledged, along with several others, a bounce in their step as they moved with renewed vigour. The respite, however short and tenuous as it might be, would do them all some good.

**-**

 

Tony rolled as a brute charged at him and came up breathing hard. He ducked behind a pillar before the creature turned and took a moment to try to catch his breath. This was all he seemed to know now, hiding and running, fighting and evading. That was all that was left after the invasion and he was exhausted. They were all exhausted.

The pillar shuddered with the brute’s charge and Tony blinked dust out of his eyes before he moved, instinct guiding him through the haze and the chaos. He was brought short by a marauder appearing in front of him. It grabbed him by the throat, squeezing tightly. The blue light of his biotics flared, pushing against the converted Turian. The marauder snarled, but held on long enough to fling him away, into the path of the brute.

He tried to use his biotics against the brute, but he was just too tired, too drained to do anything. The brute swung at him, large fist descending inexorably on him. He had the brief sensation of being suspended in air before his entire body jarred with the impact of landing. He lay for a long moment, trying to take stock of his aches and pains, and find the energy to move again.

He rolled over, only to have a the heavy weight of the brute’s foot press him back into the ground. Attempting to reach for his biotics again proved to be a failure as they didn’t respond. He despaired at his abilities failing him now, but he had been using them almost every day since the world had ended and it felt almost inevitable.

The brute gripped him tightly and he struggled to little avail. It hefted him up and then dropped him abruptly. He could feel the spike of a dragons tooth slide into him, agonising as it rent through skin and organs without consideration. He screamed until his throat was hoarse and he couldn’t any more, but the pain didn’t abate. The feeling that his strength, his vitality, everything that made him him, was being sapped from him was somehow worse. All he was left with was the pain and the bright blue light of the conversion technology.

He opened his eyes, expecting to wake from his nightmare to the dark parking structure they’d found. Instead, he blinked for a moment against the blue glow that lit up the structure before all traces of sleep disappeared and he rolled to a crouch, trying to anticipate where the danger was coming from. It took several moments longer than it should have for him to realise the glow was caused by his own biotics, not the Reaper forces' modifications.

He breathed slowly and carefully, until the blue light of his biotics had faded and the area was bathed almost entirely in darkness once more. Only a few standing lamps lit the space, focused mostly on the entrance so they could react quickly if they were found. He stared up at the dark ceiling for a long moment, letting the shuffle and noise of a large number of people in a small space, no matter how quiet they were trying to be, fill his hearing like static drowning out his own thoughts.

“Care to join me?” a voice asked and Tony started, biotics flaring faintly and briefly before fading from sight again. He turned to see Anderson seated against some rubble not too far from Tony, datapad in one hand, and in the other which was stretched out toward Tony was a flask. Tony snorted, but shifted to put on the jacket he’d draped across his shoulders while he’d been sleeping but which had fallen to the ground, and slumped next to Anderson, accepting the flask.

He took a healthy swig and almost choked on the sharp taste. He hadn’t been much for drinking anything but light beers, occasionally experimenting with alien varieties, not since his childhood, but he could tell what Anderson had was good, and expensive. He wondered how much of the stuff was left, how rare in the universe this small taste was now. This might even be the last of it.

“Shepard will come through for us,” Anderson told him. Tony just nodded, not needing or even really believing the comfort. Shepard had pulled off miracles before, commanded victory when no one else would have been able to, but he wasn’t sure even Shepard could halt this onslaught. No one individual could, not when countless civilisations had tried and failed. And Shepard had spent six months effectively under house arrest to answer for a year spent working for Cerberus and a Batarian star system blowing up. Tony wasn’t sure which he found more objectionable.

Shepard had been by turn the Alliance’s hero and villain, not a position Tony envied, and the stories were often as vague as they were contradictory. But Tony knew that Shepard was one of the single most important factors in shaping the galaxy as it now was. Giant and ancient synthetic beings with delusions of being gods and all. Wherever Shepard went there were waves of change. He just hoped something good might come of it all in time for those who’d been left on the planet.

Tony kept the entrance in his periphery as he drew his pistol, one of the Armax Arsenal line and the best compromise between damage, accuracy and rate of fire he’d managed to scrimp to afford. Slowly and methodically he took the time to clean it, not sure when they’d have another chance in the coming days and a maintained weapon might be the difference between life and death.

He could feel Anderson’s eyes on him, watching and evaluating him. By what criteria, Tony didn’t know, but it made him feel like a raw cadet again. That was the prerogative of Admirals, he supposed.

“You remind me of someone I knew, someone who served under me. Young and brash, stubborn as hell. Unorthodox, but someone I could always count on when there wasn’t any other hope,” Anderson said, voice soft and designed to lull him into a sense of companionship. Whether false or not, he wasn’t sure. It was the tone they taught leaders and interrogators alike since it fostered a sense of connection. He’d garnered that much before dropping out of the N7 training.

“You barely know me.”

“A battlefield has a way of getting to the heart of a man quickly,” Anderson told him with a piercing look. “If you’re half the soldier, half the man, that I think you are, then I’m glad to have you at my side.”

Tony thought of the way he’d trusted people before, of how they’d let him down one way or the other. He thought of how he’d trusted Anderson’s judgement to do the right thing, was trusting the man in the most desperate fight for survival any of them had ever faced.

“It’s my turn for watch,” Tony said in lieu of addressing Anderson’s comment. Anderson just gave him an easy nod, clearly not having expected a response and patted Tony on the shoulder before moving to take his spot to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Earth, Sol System, 2186 (present day)**

 

The third place they’d found in two days looked like it might be somewhere they could dig in for the long haul, but the only thing Tony could bring himself to feel other than exhausted was relieved. Everyone seemed to be in a similar state to him if the simmering tensions and frustrated outbursts were anything to go by.

“We’ve set up sleeping quarters in the storage rooms,” one of the privates told him. All the soldiers they seemed to have gathered to them were privates, corporals and lieutenants of lower rank. Those of higher rank who’d been on Earth had either fallen, were at the hearing when it blew, or were too far out of reach. Which made Tony Anderson’s de facto second in command. He didn’t know how to feel about that, had resigned himself to not thinking about it until everything was over, one way or another.

“How are supplies looking?”

“We’ll be fine for a few days with rationing,” the young man said with a grimace. Tony nodded, he hadn’t expected anything different. They needed more supplies. They needed more people. They needed more space. They needed more everything.

“I’ll take a team out soon,” Tony told him and the young man looked relived. He snapped a salute and jogged away.

Tony continued on his way, slowing when he heard a scuffle.

“Why are you keeping me here!” a man demanded, struggling against the female soldier who was trying to get a hold of him.

“What’s going on?” Tony asked, looking the civilian directly in the eye and grabbing his attention.

“You can’t keep me here,” the man declared. “I need to go. I have to go back.”

“Go back where?” Tony asked gently, not approaching the man yet, not until he’d calmed down.

“Home,” the man said, sagging in the soldier’s arms. “I have to go home. She needs me.”

A young woman in the small crowd that had gathered to stand and watch gasped softly.

“You can’t, Daddy,” she said, coming forward to grasp him. They sank to the floor together. “You can’t go. It’s not safe.”

“She needs me,” he said, clinging to the woman so tightly Tony was sure it would leave bruises. She seemed to grip him just as tightly back. “My Anna needs me.”

The young woman looked up at them, devastation written across her features that was sadly all too common these days.

“She’s dead. My mother’s dead. Those things dragged her body away while we ran.”

The young woman started sobbing then, smothering her face in her father’s shoulder, while he stared vacantly into the distance. Tony figured they were dealing with everything better than some, especially with the worrying number of people under his care who seemed to be taking more and more reckless actions. Whether they were suicidal, apathetic or at wit’s end didn’t matter any more. They had to keep doing what little they could for everyone and hope it was enough.

“Take them somewhere private, will you?” he asked the soldier. She nodded briefly before turning back to the grieving family.

“Yes, sir,” she said, her own voice shaky. Tony watched her lead the two traumatised civilians away and leaned against the pale green wall of the corridor to wait for her. It took almost a quarter hour for her to return and she was trembling slightly when she did.

“How are you holding up, soldier?” he asked.

“Fine, sir,” she said automatically, spine straightening at attention reflexively. He nodded, not commenting either way.

“I was retired,” Tony told her, keeping his gaze ahead as they walked. “Honourable discharge. But that was before all this.”

It felt like a different life now. It might not have turned out the way he’d anticipated, but he’d mostly liked where he’d been. But everything he’d worked towards didn’t mean anything now. Nothing did but surviving.

“Before,” she murmured and shook her head. “I just graduated. I was supposed to be getting my first assignment.”

He kept his silence, knowing his presence was only important insofar as there was someone to hear her confession.

“I wanted to explore space,” she told him, slowing to a stop and wiping her hands down her face. “I wanted to be a dashing hero fighting pirates and rescuing people. None of this is what I signed up for.”

“It’s not what any of us did,” Tony told her.

“I know that,” she said, digging her hands into her hair in frustration. “How can you be so calm?”

“You want to know the real secret of command?” Tony asked her. She turned to look at him expectantly. “None of us is calm. We’re all just very good pretenders.”

“That doesn’t actually make me feel better,” she said with a faint laugh and he winked at her. She breathed in deeply and then out before nodding her gratitude to him and walking on with a steadier, more confident step. He sighed, wondering if they’d managed to scrounge up any coffee yet; he could really use the extra boost.

“Sir,” someone said walking up and Tony straightened, pulling on whatever resources he had to look composed and alert as he turned. He summoned up a faint smile for Sutton. The young man was hanging in there admirably.

“We have communications,” Sutton told him. “One of the tech guys managed to set up the QEC and the Admiral’s on the line with Hackett.”

Tony nodded, not sure how he felt about that. It would help them strategise if they knew what was going on out there, but he almost wasn’t sure he wanted to know what state the rest of the galaxy was in. At least they knew the quantum entanglement communicator couldn’t be hacked and the Reapers wouldn’t have access to their communications.

“The Admiral wanted you to join him,” Sutton continued.

Tony turned to head to Anderson's location, ignoring the bruises and aches they’d all started to accumulate from the almost constant fighting. Rationing of medigel had begun almost immediately and only the most severe injuries were being treated with it now.

“Thanks, kid,” Tony said absently, nodding to the corporal as he went by, heading to the section of the basement that was partially secluded by fallen rubble. Anderson stood there, illuminated by the glow of Hackett’s hologram.

“Lieutenant,” Anderson greeted before turning his attention back to Hackett. “We’re holding the line here for now.”

“Good,” Hackett said. “Shepard’s come through with plans for a weapon we think could defeat the Reapers once and for all.”

“How viable is it?” Anderson asked and Tony could hear the carefully concealed hope in his voice. Not for himself, Tony was sure Anderson felt much the same as him that it was unlikely they were going to live out this war, but hope for humanity and the other races to survive beyond this.

“We’re putting all our resources into this,” Hackett told him. “From the records it looks like the Protheans came close to succeeding before the end of the last cycle.”

Tony had never paid much attention to his galactic history lessons beyond immediate history that still impacted him. He’d resented the Citadel and everything to do with it, including its apparent Prothean creators, that he hadn’t cared to listen to theories about the previous cycle of evolution that they now knew had been culled by Reapers.

“The timeline?” Anderson asked.

“Unknown,” Hackett said with a grimace to which Anderson nodded stoically. Hackett paused for a moment. “There’s something else.”

Tony mirrored Anderson’s deep breath in, trying to gird themselves for what news might be more terrible than they had already experienced.

“What is it?”

“Before the Reapers reached Earth, they hit Arcturus. The took out the Parliament,” Hackett told him.

“Prime Minister Shastri?”

“Gone,” Hackett told him. “The two of us and Udina are the only remnants of a government we have left.”

Tony hoped Udina’s inevitable grab for power wouldn’t end up doing them irreversible harm in their war efforts. He despised the way Udina represented everything he considered to be true about the Citadel; corruption, self-aggrandisement, ambition.

“Shit,” Anderson said softly. Hackett raised an eyebrow but seemed just as resigned as Anderson. “How much does Udina know about the project?”

“Next to nothing,” Hackett assured him and Anderson nodded, relieved. Hackett glanced off to one side, away from the camera projecting his image and nodded gravely. “Shepard’s trying to get through. I’ll contact you again later.”

Anderson nodded and they watched Hackett disappear from the projector. They were silent for a moment.

“They’ve got their priorities,” Anderson told him, voice firm and back straight. “Our job is to hold the line here until they get to us with their weapon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The troops could stand a little good news, I think,” Anderson added with a smile.

“Yes, sir,” Tony said with a smile of his own. For the first time he felt like there might be something left for the survivors to crawl back from when this was all over.

-

Tony kept a cautious eye on their surroundings as he led a scouting party for supplies. They were edging their way past another stand of dragons teeth, though only one or two of them were in use. Even now, Tony couldn’t stand looking at the corpses impaled on them.

“Oh god,” Donahue said, causing them all to reluctantly pause and pay some attention to the corpses in the process of conversion. Tony was coming to learn all the names of his men, but it was slow going when there was so much chaos and the faces around him seemed to change so often as they lost and gained survivors. “Oh god, Danny.”

Donahue started forward, shrugging off the gentle attempts to hold him back and then outright struggling against the more determined ones.

“It’s his brother,” one of the others murmured, aghast.

“Danny, it’s gonna be alright,” Donahue said, knocking away the soldiers closest to him and rushing forward. The body was only half converted, bright blue lines snaking through pale and sickly flesh, but it still responded to the proximity and the spike lowered, depositing the husk on the ground.

“Danny, listen to me,” Donahue pleaded. “I know you’re in there somewhere. I know you can still hear me. Fight this, Danny. Come on.”

“It’s not going to work,” Tony told him, approaching cautiously. He kept a close eye on the husk as it swayed wildly without moving forward. Tony pulled on his biotics without discharging it, feeling it prickle just beneath the surface of his skin. He let a hand rest on his pistol as he edged forward.

“Danny, please,” Donahue said. “It’s your big brother.”

The husk tilted and lurched toward them, mouth open in a harsh scream. Tony acted before conscious thought and fired one precise shot. His aim was true and the husk jerked at the impact before collapsing in a heap.

“No!” Donahue screamed, taking a step toward the husk that used to be his brother. Abruptly, he stopped and spun, turning to face Tony. “You killed him!”

“I’m sorry but he was already dead,” Tony told him, cautious of the gun Donahue was resting his hand on.

“You killed him,” Donahue shouted, drawing his weapon and aiming at Tony. His aim wavered erratically as he dropped beside the husk, focus split between the two.

“It wasn’t your brother any more,” Tony said softly, slowly lowering his own pistol and clipping it to its place at the small of his back. He raised his hands then, showing that he wasn’t intending to harm the man. “No one deserves to end like that.”

“Danny,” he said, dragging the husk into his lap. Tony grimaced but wondered how many people had lost loved ones to the Reapers only to have them later come after them, even if they were then unrecognisable. The enemy seemed unstoppable, with ground soldiers endlessly being created by their own fallen. Sometimes he thought the trauma of facing them, knowing it could be a neighbour, an old friend, a fellow marine, was worse than anything else.

“Donahue,” Sutton said, stepping cautiously forward. “I’m sorry about your brother, but we can’t stay here.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Donahue snarled, gun swinging from Tony to Sutton and back again. “He’s all I’ve got left.”

Tony knew Donahue was in a delicate state, but they really couldn’t afford to linger.

“There’s isn’t anyone here who doesn’t know what it’s like to lose someone,” Tony told him, edging forward a step. “You’re not alone in this.”

“Don’t, just don’t,” Donahue told him, emphasising his words with a gesture of the gun. “You killed my brother,” he continued, spittle flying from his mouth and his eyes glinting. “This is all your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony told him, hoping to defuse the situation. “I really wish I hadn’t had to do that.”

“He’s gone and it’s all your fault!” Donahue insisted, clutching the husk to him and snarling at Tony. The gun shook in his white-knuckled grip and Tony brought up a shield just before he shot and it flared, absorbing the energy.

“Stop,” Tony told him. “No one else needs to get hurt. There’s been enough death.”

Donahue seemed surprised at his action and then his expression hardened and he fired again and again, his shots going wild. Tony’s shield held steady against the onslaught, but the shots were going everywhere, coming perilously close to hitting his people as they dived for cover. Another shot from behind Tony and to his left had him shifting to look over his shoulder to see Sutton standing there, looking horrified at his own action.

“It’s okay kid,” Tony said softly, turning his back to the others to provide as much privacy as he could. “You did the right thing, you saved people.”

“There’re signs of habitation ahead,” one of the scouts told him, interrupting them. Sutton straightened immediately and turned away so that Tony had no choice but to let it go for now. All of his soldiers seemed like kids to him, barely old enough to have seen a proper battlefield, never mind a protracted war.

“Show me,” Tony said, indicating for the others to continue on. He held back until they had all passed him, making sure that no one was left behind. They were all subdued as they passed him and he took one last, lingering look at Donahue before he took up the rear.

“We might be able to hack our way in, sir,” a young woman said. He thought she might be Corporal Levitt. He nodded sharply and jogged ahead to inform the others. The building they entered was dark and broken down, but the walls were less scarred the further in they went. It looked like it had been a series of shops, but everything was either closed down or broken now. The group slowed the closer they got to their destination and Tony made his way forward again.

“We’re through, sir,” Levitt said.

“Take a team and breach,” Tony told her and she nodded, gesturing to four more of the others to follow her. One of them tapped a few more keys and the door slid smoothly open. The team entered silently and easily, working together well and Tony made a mental note to keep them together as much as possible.

“Sir,” one of the soldiers called and Tony moved immediately, following his people through the door. Sutton was close on his heels, which he didn’t comment on but didn’t object to either. They stood, the five of them spread out, aiming at a group of survivors who were aiming right back at them.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Tony said, holding up his hands, hoping he wouldn’t have to face another massacre today. He wasn’t sure how these people had survived, but it was possible the Reaper forces that had passed through were more focussed on brute force than infiltration and their barricades had held. Slowly, so very slowly, both groups lowered their weapons.

“Oh god,” one of the survivors said. “We thought there wasn’t anyone else left.”

“Are you here to rescue us?”

“Is it over?”

“We’ve set up a command centre,” Tony told them, “and we’re taking in all survivors we find, but I’m sorry, it’s only just begun.”

Someone in the back started sobbing softly, but Tony didn’t have the energy to pull any emotional punches, not after everything that had happened.

“We can’t go,” one of the survivors said. “They said they were coming back for us. We can’t go until they do.”

“Face facts,” another survivor said, jabbing a finger into the first one’s chest. “If they’re coming back at all, it’s as one of those husk things.”

Tony shivered, unable to stop thinking about Donahue and his brother.

“You don’t know that!” the first one said.

“You’ve stayed holed up here. You haven’t seen what it looks like out there,” the second said.”There’s nothing left. Nothing sane or reasonable or whole. We’re on our own.”

“There’s more left than you think,” Tony told them all. “We’re still struggling to create something here, but the entire galaxy is focussed on stopping the Reapers. It’s not hopeless.”

“I’m not leaving,” the first insisted stubbornly. “I’m not chancing going out there with those things. We’ve been safe here and the others will be coming back to get us.”

“We can’t make you come with us,” Tony told him, knowing all about holding onto beliefs, even irrational ones, when everything around you was going crazy. “But we have somewhere that’s as safe as we can make it under the circumstances, safer than what you have here. No one can promise you more than that.”

Some of them seemed to waver toward joining them. They looked at each other, conveying a wealth of conversation that Tony could only barely grasp the basics of with just a glance.

“No,” the first one said definitively again with a stubborn shake of his head. “No. There’s a safe haven out there somewhere, somewhere we can be safe.”

“We heard stories,” one of the other survivors said hesitantly. A young man with glasses, one of the lenses of which was shattered. “Within the first few days, when there were more of us and it was easier to venture out for supplies, we heard stories of someone who’d prepared for this, who had built a shelter that couldn’t be breached. That’s what they went looking for. They said when they found it they’d come back for us. But it was just stories.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Tony told them, shoulders shrugging. It might very well have some truth to it, but it sounded to him like desperate wishful thinking. “But if it is, then it’ll be easier to track down this haven with our resources. In the meantime, you can stay with us.”

Several of the survivors seemed to hesitate, their reluctance and scepticism wearing thin before finally snapping. Most of them drifted off to begin gathering the few items they’d managed to scrounge that meant anything to them. They even directed the soldiers to some of the supplies, though Tony made sure they left more than enough for the few who held out. Tony had tried his best and he didn’t have the energy to spare to try to convince them further. They’d clearly made their choice.

“We’re ready,” the young man with glasses said finally and Tony nodded, gesturing for his squad to get into position around he civilians. They’d need to start some training soon, he realised, if they wanted to be on anything but the defensive. They couldn’t keep risking the trained soldiers, their only source of protection, for civilians who wouldn’t be pulling their own weight. He’d have to talk to Anderson when he got back.

**-**

Tony sipped at his cup of coffee and closed his eyes in bliss. It was black and bitter, which wasn’t his preference, but since milk and sugar were in even shorter supply than coffee, he would take what he could get.

“Sir,” a voice said, interrupting his brief moment to himself, and Tony sighed before opening his eyes. Given a choice, he wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t be in charge of any one but himself and no one would be relying on him, but the end of the galaxy didn’t leave people with too many choices.

“Decker,” Tony said, hoping he got the name right. Given the way the man didn’t react negatively, he figured he did. The man was one of the few engineers they had and he’d been tasked with supervising communications.

“I think I have something,” Decker said hesitantly. Tony put down his cup of coffee and gave Decker his full attention. “Ever since we set up communications we’ve been trying to reach out to any other possible pockets of survivors.”

Tony nodded. It was one of the first priorities he and Anderson had discussed. The better they could cooperate with other groups, the better their chances of holding out against the Reapers. So far they hadn’t had much luck. Most of the signals they’d received were automated or small pockets of civilians who were both not reachable and relatively safe where they were. But it was still early days and Tony tried to hold out hope for more.

“What have you got?” Tony asked, leaning forward as Decker tapped at his omni-tool, drawing up the information and sending it to Tony’s. He looked over the information rising from the orange hologram display, but it was mostly illegible to him. “You’re gonna have to spell it out for me. There’s a reason I only just scraped through my tech classes.”

The smile he gave Decker was wry and Decker met it with a nervous one of his own. Decker settled in opposite Tony, tapping again at his omni-tool, fingers flying across the holographic keys. A different set of information was raised then.

“I’m not entirely sure the full extend of it,” Decker said. “But we’ve been getting encrypted signals for several days now. I finally managed to decode some of them.”

“What did you find?”

“Some other isolated groups reaching out much like we’ve been,” Decker told him. “At least that’s the most obvious explanation.”

“How sure can we be that these aren’t the Reapers?” Tony asked, looking over the messages but aware enough that he probably wouldn’t be able to tell one way or the other. The QEC might be secure, but that only worked over distances on a galactic scale. Communications over a shorter range were far less secure.

“I can’t be,” Decker admitted slowly, “not entirely.”

Tony could read the desperate hope in his expression though and the eager cant of his shoulders as he leaned forward. Just admitting that it might be a trick seemed painful for the man.

“Where are they coming from?”

Decker sighed then and shrugged.

“For obvious reasons the origin points have been obscured. We’ve done the same for any communications we send out that aren’t on the QEC,” Decker told him. Tony hadn’t really expected different, but he’d hoped. “The best we can do is pinpoint several different sets of communications to Europe, Africa and America.”

Tony thought about that for a long moment. Reaching out to Africa and Europe might be too dangerous at this point. Even trying to reach out to other groups in America would be problematic. The Reapers’ ground forces would attack any ground force of their own and the Reapers themselves and their Harvesters would take down any coordinated air assault.

“The group in America, how reachable are they?” Tony asked. Decker shook his head.

"I don’t know. They seem to be somewhere on the East Coast.”

Something about that niggled at Tony’s memory and it took him far too long to remember the conversation he’d had with Stephen Ross, agent of Cerberus. He’d mentioned a Cerberus lab somewhere on the East Coast and Tony couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection. The thought that Cerberus might be reaching out to them, hoping for an alliance, made him shudder. He wouldn’t work with them, not even after the end of the world, not even if Anderson insisted on it. Though somehow he doubted the Admiral would be any more keen to work with them than he was.

“Nothing more specific?” Tony asked, hopeful.

“Maybe New York?” Decker offered with a shrug. “That was the last communications hub I could trace their signal through.”

“New York,” Tony murmured. He’d spent a fair bit of time at the Rhode Island base and had taken several trips to New York during what free time he had. He had travelled as much as he could in that time, so enamoured with the possibilities open to him that he’d tried to do everything he possibly could.

“Maybe,” Decker hedged and Tony nodded, acknowledging the limits of his abilities.

“And the content of the messages?”

“Generic,” Decker said with another shrug. “Just an encoded request for contact.”

“Thanks, Decker,” Tony said, dismissing him. “I’ll discuss this with Anderson.”

Decker nodded and rose, leaving him alone again. Absently, he picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip before gagging. It had gone cold. He sighed; it was such a waste of their precious resources. Abandoning the coffee, he rose as well and sought out Anderson.

The Admiral was organising the rotation schedule for the next week, his brow furrowed as he concentrated. Tony was aware that the new training for the civilians was a pain to implement, but for the most part it seemed to be going well. At least a few of the civilians had handled weapons before or had some sort of defensive training and they’d been able to alleviate some of the burden on the military personnel already.

“Decker had some news for us,” Tony told him and Anderson looked up, eyebrow raised. Sometimes it was so easy to see the intimidating Admiral that had influenced the course of humanity in the galaxy. Sometimes Tony wanted nothing more than to needle him to see the equally amused and resigned look of exasperation in his eyes. He curbed the impulse. “We’ve been receiving communications.”

Tony explained to him as much as he could about what Decker had told him. He transmitted the information Decker had sent him as well, knowing that Anderson was far more likely to understand what he saw. If nothing else, Tony knew the Admiral had kept his skills as sharp as possible in preparation for the worst case scenario. He figured the end of the world counted.

“You want to do something about this,” Anderson said and Tony nodded though it hadn’t really been a question. “I can’t spare too many people to go with you.”

“I wasn’t expecting it.”

Anderson sighed then clenched his jaw, considering Tony’s plan.

“Are you sure?” he asked finally.

“I know the area. If any of them are still alive and I can track them down, then I might have contacts there too,” Tony told him. Admittedly, it was reckless and dangerous, but they weren’t going to be able to do anything to the Reapers without a few risks. Besides, if it turned out to be Cerberus, he was fairly certain he was the one most likely to spot a trap. He was the most familiar with how they worked and the lengths they were willing to go to get what they wanted.

“We need to start making allies,” Tony continued. “We can’t do this, any of this, by ourselves.”

“I know,” Anderson admitted with another sigh and Tony could tell it had been worrying for some time. Tony had been focussed on surviving, on the day-to-day and minute-to-minute needs of the people they’d gathered to them. The Admiral had been looking forward and making plans. Which is probably why Anderson was an Admiral and Tony wasn’t even close. “All right. I can’t really afford to lose you, but all right.”

“You’ve got a lot of people who could do what I’ve been doing,” Tony told him, thinking of Sutton and even Levitt, with a little more experience. Decker could take over the minutia. Tony wasn’t irreplaceable. Anderson gave him an exasperated smile.

“Son,” he started then shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Tony looked at Anderson for a long moment before looking away. He hadn’t been doing anything special, just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going.

“I’ll need a pilot and a shuttle,” Tony said, knowing that his piloting skills wouldn’t be up to evading an entire army.

“I’ll make sure you have what you need.”


End file.
